


Bet On It

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon verse, M/M, Relationship Through Another's Eyes, Season 2/3 Gap, outside perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl could always put money behind his dad and Daryl being a thing. (For the 400 Word Mini-Challenge to do "Rickyl From an Outside Perspective")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bet On It

Carl knew long, long before any of the rest of them that his dad was queer. Which meant he totally won the bet.

It was stupid really, the start of it all. It had begun in the winter--that first lost season that was one nightmare after the next, one house after the next, one walker-ed driveway followed by another packed full forest of the dead. Carol had started it because of course she had. Even Carl could see that she was becoming a ringleader in stirring the pot, as it were. But she couldn’t do it alone and it was T-Dog that had really instigated the whole thing, walking around and elbowing people to put their bets in, all of them playing around with the money they found in dead men’s wallets that no longer had any value except for this.

Were Rick and Daryl fucking in the woods? Were they?

They totally were. Carl could tell. At first, it had angered him--his dad’s flirtation when his mom was pregnant and so nearby. But of course, she angered him, too, and he worked through about seven years of being a teenager all in the space of a few months, hashing out his _daddy_ problems and his _mommy_ problems through glaring at the corner of rat-infested walls.

The bet, though, he started to take that seriously. Rick had never told him that he was anything other than straight. They’d never reached that level of talk. But Carl had known. It didn’t take much, even from his perspective, to see the looks his dad gave Daryl. At first, he tried to reconcile it, say that it was immoral, as sinful as the church Lori took him to said. But after awhile, Carl realized it wasn’t something like lust or desire in his dad’s eyes that made him squirm with uncomfortableness. It was the _love_ in them.

And that was the kicker wasn’t it? That when his dad looked at Daryl, his dad _loved_ him. And it was so unusual for Carl, so very unheard of for that emotion to be shining in either of his parents eyes, that he started to depend on it. Started to think the world must not be all bad, because there was this. Of course, there was this. There was Rick, looking at Daryl like that. And of course he had to bet on it.


End file.
